Wink don’t blink, precious fleeting summer may finally be here.
Lo. Summer. Real Newfoundland summer. All 11 degrees of it. Here it is in all its — oh shit. There it goes. It’s gone. Barely noticeable. You never even bought that wet suit and it is over. No. NO. Not. This. Summer. You will grab these last few weeks by their (fingers crossed) warmish slippery balls and ride the fog-wind!
You will hike quickly to The Spout to keep warm and camp overnight with your winter gear. The first hot
day (there has to be one) you will cart your pool raft out to La Manche and bring along the perfect
cocktail and drink it floating in the greatest swim hole in the universe.
You will play flashlight tag in the cemetery in a parka with your grown-up friends. You will flit from beachfire
to beach-fire in Middle Cove like a god damned hummingbird-pheonix risen from the icy-flames of our shit-July.
You will not collapse on your couch Fridays after work. You will drive to a cabin and collapse on a
deck chair wrapped in a wool blanket. In January, we did very little. Now you will do it all. Sleep is for the dead: sleep is for next January.
Summer’s magic wand has waved over our city and turned our homes into large lockers in which to store empties and muddy hikers. What do you eat in the midst of this whirlwind? Cooking is a bluff we use the rest of the year to pretend living inside in bad weather is fulfilling.
In July, we strip off all pretence and dispense with the standard equation of food + heat + work = meal. There will be no casserole. You will grab things and you will put them in your mouth; you will do this on your way out the door, towel in hand, ever hopeful of sun, on your way to another pond, another friendbeer, another fire.
And what is it you put in your mouth? We have a short season of bounty. The most indulgent way to eat your freshly bought/ gathered/caught summer fare is “as is.” Rinse and bite. Hunks of cucumber and tomato on your plate. A good chef can cook anything. A great chef knows when to cook nothing.
A great summer can be fuelled on local produce, cheese, and that cold hotdog left on the counter from last night’s BBQ.